Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Comments (0) | Permalink

Comments (2) | Permalink

Baptists change approach on gays

By YVETTE CRAIG
Staff Writer


The Southern Baptist Convention appears to have taken a step back from its hard-line stance on homosexuality.

The SBC overwhelmingly adopted resolutions yesterday making parents responsible for where they send their children to school and also lifting the longtime boycott against the Walt Disney Co.
Members were quick to add that they still think homosexuality is a sin but they know they shouldn't demonize gay people; that they should, instead, offer "the love, the grace, the forgiveness and the healing of God."

Gay activists — on hand to stand firm against any call to action to yank children from public schools deemed accepting of homosexual lifestyles — were pleased by the "softer" resolution, adding that the time was ripe for open dialogue with the SBC.

"Faith should never be used as a weapon," said Barbara Menard, director of the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based gay rights advocacy group. "In what we've seen today … there is no place in today's houses of worship for hate and divisiveness."

On the final day of the SBC's annual meeting, nine resolutions were passed by nearly 12,000 messengers. Resolutions approved by the convention, however, are nonbinding, and all member churches are autonomous in their ministries.

Southern Baptists' criticism of public schools arose before their meeting last year, but the Committee on Resolutions chose not to bring up a proposed statement for a vote. The SBC yesterday passed a new resolution titled "Educating Children," a noticeable change from the proposed "Homosexuality in Public Schools" resolution that had been submitted. That resolution called for urging parents to pull their children out of public schools altogether because such schools were deemed to be in a state of moral decay and supportive of gay lifestyles.

The resolution that was passed yesterday recommends that parents take a more active role in their children's secular education and calls on churches to help monitor textbooks and school programs for "offensive material."

"Homosexual activists and their allies are devoting substantial resources and using political power to promote the acceptance among schoolchildren of homosexuality as a morally legitimate lifestyle," the resolution said in part.

Ray Elder, senior pastor of Euhaw Baptist Church in Ridgeland, S.C., wholeheartedly supports the SBC's stance on gay issues.

"I don't mean to sound ugly or hateful, but I feel like homosexuality is being shoved in our throats," said Elder, father of three boys and four grandchildren. "But the message is, 'God loves homosexuals and desires to deliver them from this perversion.' "

Richard Land, president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, claims that homosexuality, like violence, adultery and promiscuity, is a symptom and consequence of larger societal failures.

"It's a dirty little secret among homosexual men that they were first introduced to the lifestyle because of molestation," Land said in an interview. "You can go and look at all kinds of studies that's been done. What we do believe is that homosexuality is not innate."

Houston lawyer Bruce Shortt, who co-sponsored the measure, said many public schools promote gay acceptance through officially sanctioned gay clubs, diversity training, anti-bullying courses, safe sex and safe schools programs.

Children need to have their impressionable eyes, ears and minds protected, Shortt added.

"I was actually very pleasantly surprised to see what came out of committee … I didn't know if we were going to have a floor fight over this," said Shortt, who attended public schools.

He attributed the resolution's passage to Southern Baptists' being "more informed" after doing some "soul-searching" since the matter was brought before the convention last year.

Shortt, who heads a ministry called Exodus Mandate, said his group would be starting a home-schooling program called Family-to-Family to expand the ranks of home-schoolers. It would match experienced home-schoolers with new ones.

"Most of us who home-school run into three or four families every year who are intensely interested in what we are doing," Shortt said. "They're like kids with their noses and hands pressed up against the glass looking in a candy store. But for some reason a lot of the people are a little afraid to step across the line."

As for canceling the SBC's eight-year boycott of Disney, church leaders said they had made their point.

The boycott began in 1997 in protest of Disney's giving benefits to same-sex partners of employees.

"The boycott has communicated effectively our displeasure concerning products and policies that violate moral righteousness and traditional family values, and for a boycott to be effective, it must be specifically targeted and of limited duration," Gene Mims, chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, said in a press conference.

In declaring an end to the action, the SBC asked Disney to "serve the families of America by providing only those products that affirm traditional family values," and called on Southern Baptists to "practice continued discernment regarding all entertainment products from all sources."

Over the past 30 years, the SBC has passed 13 resolutions against gays and lesbians.

"Faith, hope and love will only win the day when we're honest with ourselves about the violence that exists in our world and in our hearts," the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Menard said. "Hate hurts and has no place in the hearts and minds of people of faith."

From: http://www.thetennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050623/NEWS06/506230422

Comments (1) | Permalink

Equality
It’s fair to say that Diane Schroer has one impressive resume.
In her 25 year career in the United States Army, she completed over 450 parachute jumps as an Airborne Ranger qualified Special Forces officer, received numerous decorations including the Defense Superior Service Medal, and was hand-picked to head up a classified national security operation.


Until she retired from the Army as a Colonel last year, Diane had been David Schroer. "I knew I was different before I was old enough to remember things," she says. "My earliest memories are of just feeling I should be a girl and wondering why I wasn’t."

After careful deliberation with her doctor, she began the process of transitioning from male to female and started undergoing hormone therapy. While still presenting as a man, Diane found a job that she thought would be a perfect fit given her remarkable experience in the military – a position as a senior terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress. She applied, was interviewed and indeed, the Library of Congress was impressed with her resume too. She was offered the job soon after.

But before starting, she had lunch with her future boss and explained she was transitioning and that in order to make things easier on herself and her coworkers, she would start her new job presenting as a woman. The next day the boss called her back and rescinded the job offer. Why, asked Diane. You’re not a "good fit," she was told.

Diane is now being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union in a suit against the Library of Congress for sex discrimination under Title VII. Although Title VII prohibits employers from discriminating against all people who do not conform to gender stereotypes, including transgender people, cases like Diane's demonstrate how important it is that we work to pass a federal law that clarifies in no uncertain terms that it is illegal to discriminate against people in employment on the basis of gender identity and expression or sexual orientation. So far 16 states have laws to protect gay, lesbian and bisexual people and 6 states have laws to protect transgender people - leaving many GLBT people will little legal recourse.

Comments (0) | Permalink

Click banner for article. Click here for code.

Poll: 1 in 20 high school students is gay
Christopher Curtis, PlanetOut Network
Friday, October 8, 2004 / 03:00 PM
SUMMARY: About 5 percent of America's high school students identify as lesbian or gay, according to a new national poll from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.


About 5 percent of America's high school students identify as lesbian or gay, according to a new national poll from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).

The poll was conducted by Widmeyer Research and Polling in conjunction with Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc. It asked 9th-12th grade students about their sexual orientation and the attitudes of others towards lesbian and gay people in schools.

"The findings suggest that, on average, every classroom in America has at least one student who identifies as lesbian or gay and that a majority of those students know at least one gay or lesbian person, whether it be a teacher, a classmate or a family member," said GLSEN Executive Director Kevin Jennings in a prepared statement.

In addition to finding that about 5 percent of students identify as gay and lesbian, 16 percent of American students have a gay or lesbian person in their family and 72 percent know someone who is gay or lesbian.

Despite nearly three-quarters of students knowing someone who is gay or lesbian, 66 percent of students admit to using homophobic language, such as "that's so gay" to describe something wrong, bad or stupid. Eighty-one percent say they have heard homophobic language in their schools frequently or often.

"Students spend their days in classrooms where 'faggot' is heard more often than the morning announcements," said Jennings, adding that "39.1 percent of the LGBT students report being physically harassed because of their sexual orientation."

"It is probably shocking to many adults how many of their children are using offensive homophobic language day in and day out in our nation's high schools," said Marty McGough, director for Widmeyer Research and Polling.

The new poll, along with GLSEN's 2003 National School Climate Survey of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, shows how LGBT students are affected by homophobic remarks.

"What is most important are parents, friends and school communities taking a stand for respect and acceptance of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity," Jennings said.

According to the latest poll, teachers, parents and peers have the most influence on student attitudes toward gay and lesbian people. Of the students polled, 79 percent said they would listen if a respected teacher said homophobic language was wrong; 69 percent of students polled said knowing a gay or lesbian classmate would likely make them more tolerant.


Comments (3) | Permalink

   Paula Gunn Allen
Allen, Paula Gunn (b. 1939)

Of mixed Native American, Scottish, and Lebanese heritage, American poet and literary scholar Paula Gunn Allen reinterprets the historic and mythic beliefs of Native Americans from a twentieth-century lesbian-feminist perspective.

Allen was born on the Cubero Spanish-Mexican land grant in New Mexico to a Laguna-Sioux-Scottish mother and a Lebanese-American father. After attending several colleges in New Mexico and Colorado, she received a B.A. in English from the University of Oregon in 1966 and an M.F.A. in creative writing two years later. During this time, she married, became a mother, and divorced. She then went to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and in 1975 completed a Ph.D. in American Studies with an emphasis in Native-American Studies.
By the early 1980s, Allen had achieved significant recognition as a Native-American poet, literary scholar, and spokesperson. Her introduction to The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986) indicates an important shift in her career, for in it she comes out as a lesbian.

Allen has received a number of awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship (1978), a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles (1980-1981), and a post-doctoral research grant from the Ford Foundation (1984-1985). She has taught English and Native-American Studies at the University of New Mexico, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Allen's culturally mixed heritage greatly influences her work as a poet, fiction writer, and literary scholar. In both her creative and critical writings, she reinterprets the historic and mythic beliefs of indigenous North American peoples from a twentieth-century lesbian-feminist perspective and develops a highly distinctive, woman-focused, non-heterosexist tradition. By incorporating Native-American accounts of a cosmic feminine power into her poetry, she connects the past with the present and creates a complex pattern of continuity, regeneration, and change that affirms her gynecentric spirit-based overview.

In "Some Like Indians Endure," for example, she associates lesbians with Native Americans in order to underscore the importance of maintaining a self-empowering visionary belief in the interconnectedness of all things. Relatedly, her novel, The Woman Who Owned the Shadows (1983), explores the cultural, sexual, and spiritual fragmentation experienced by those who have become disconnected from this overarching life force.

Allen has played a pivotal role in redefining scholarly views of traditional and contemporary Native-American sexualities. In "Hwame, Koshkalaka, and the Rest: Lesbians in American Indian Cultures" and several other essays collected in The Sacred Hoop, she argues that European colonizers and Western-trained ethnographers erased or otherwise distorted evidence of same-sex relationships in tribal cultures.

Her unique mythic system, described in The Sacred Hoop and Grandmothers of the Light (1991), represents an innovative departure from the heterosexual bias found in most mythologies. By incorporating aspects of Keres, Navajo, and other Native-American theologies into her revisionist myths, she distinguishes between (hetero)sexual biological reproduction and other forms of creativity.

Allen's work as an editor and literary scholar, along with her willingness to identify herself as lesbian in print, has enabled her to make important contributions to the careers of other lesbian and gay American-Indian writers.

From: http://www.glbtq.com/literature/allen_pg.html

Comments (0) | Permalink